Facebook Ad Metrics That Actually Matter

Getting your Facebook/Instagram ads up and running is exciting. Personally, we love seeing the results and all the important data to help drive our advertising decisions. Knowing how to read this data is key because even though your video ad may be getting millions of views for pennies on the dollar, you may be looking at the wrong data. Read on and we’ll show you where to look to view these someone hidden Facebook advertising analytics.

Where To Look For Important Data

To take a look at the numbers that can actually tell you something useful, go to the Facebook Ads Manager and click on the Columns button. Then select Customize Columns. In there you can remove the metrics you don’t want to see and search for and select the ones that matter the most to you. Once you’re looking at that collection of data, hit the Breakdown button. From here you can see which placements did better (Desktop vs. Mobile). You can also look at the breakdown by Age, Gender, Country, State, and more.

Reach – Unless you’re spending a LOT of money on ads each day, then your reach simply doesn’t interest us. What we do want to know is what percent of those people are actually responding to your ads. So if you’ve reached 700,000 people with your ads and haven’t got any webinar signups it’s because you may be targeting the wrong 700,000 people.

Clicks – Regardless of the kind of ads you run, you’ll inevitably get a ton of clicks that don’t matter. Facebook counts a click even if a user clicks on the name of your page, on the Like button, or on the See More button if you’ve got some long ad copy. Since your objective is probably to get people over to your site, then most of those clicks are irrelevant.

Video Views – Facebook counts a view as anyone who watched your video for 3 seconds or more. Since videos often autoplay in your News Feed, passive non-watching could be counted as a view if a user doesn’t scroll past it fast enough. Video views are important, but remember to keep that number in check and don’t count anyone who simply paused on it for 3 seconds and moved on quickly after.

If we were working on your campaigns together, there are about 13 metrics in total that we would make sure we were looking at. The following list is an explanation of each of our most valued Facebook ad metrics, and how they fit together to tell you what to do with your campaign next.

Impressions: The total number of times your ad was shown. This is different from Reach, which is the number of individual people who have seen your ad.

Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM): The average cost to show your ad 1,000 times. Think of this as Facebook’s price tag. You may notice that some audience net higher CPMs on a regular basis. It’s all about supply and demand, so make sure you’re always a/b testing your audiences.

Frequency: The average number of times each individual has seen your ad. Calculated by Impressions divided by Reach. This is an important metric to pay attention to, making sure you’re not oversaturating your audience with your ads.

Amount Spent: How much you’ve spent running your ads so far. This is set by you in the Budget section of your ad sets.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percent of people who saw your ad and clicked over to your opt-in page, sales page, . Calculated by taking the number of Link Clicks and dividing it by Impressions.

Link Clicks: The number of people who viewed your video or clicked on your ad and were directed to your opt-in page or sales page.

CPC (Link): The average cost of each click from your ad over to your website. Calculated by taking the Amount Spent divided by the number of Link Clicks.

Leads: The number of people who signed up on your landing page or opted in for some free content after clicking on your Facebook ad or video.

Checkouts: The number of people who converted to customers from your ad. This requires you to have set up conversion tracking on the “Thank You” page people see after completing their purchase.

Cost Per Checkout: How much each sale has cost you so far. Calculated by taking the amount Spent and dividing it by the number of checkouts.

Thruplay: The number of times your video has been viewed for 15 seconds or more.

Average % of Video Viewed: What percent of your video was actually seen by all the people who “viewed” it.

Video Views to 75%: The percent of people who “viewed” your video actually watched it until the 75% mark.

If You’re Running A Lead Generation Campaign

• Cost Per Lead is your most important metric. If your leads are more expensive use these tactics and benchmarks to figure out why they’re so high:

• Divide Link Clicks by Leads to find your landing page’s conversion rate. If it’s below 30% there are lots of things you can do to try improving it.

• If your CTR Links number is low (below 1%), either your ad creative isn’t compelling or you’re targeting the wrong audience.

• If your CPM is high, you should try out a different audience

If You’re Running A Campaign To Makes Sales

Your priority should be how many Checkouts you got and the cost per each. Ideally, your Cost Per Checkout is lower than the actual price of your product. Unhappy with your results? First, make sure you understand that selling cold on Facebook is VERY difficult. Here are some tactics and numbers to review.

• If your CTR Links number is low (below 1%), either your ad creative isn’t compelling or you’re targeting the wrong audience.

• If your CPM is high, you should try out a different audience.

• Look at the overall sales conversion rate of your sales page using Google Analytics. It’s possible that Facebook ad traffic isn’t interested in opening their wallet to you, but that warmer traffic from your blog or social media is more willing to buy. If that’s the case, trying a retargeting strategy.

If You’re Campaign Goal Is To Generate Content Awareness

Aside from the number of Leads your Content Awareness Campaign got you, here’s what else to consider:

• If your CPC (Link) is higher than $1.00, then checkout your CTR Link number. If it’s lower than 1%, either your ad creative isn’t compelling enough, or you’re targeting the wrong audience with those ads. Try testing out a different topic with the same audience first, then look for a new one if the CTR doesn’t improve.

If You’re Running Video Ads

Take a look at a few numbers to see how you can improve this campaign next time:

• If the Average % of Video Viewed is low, the beginning of your video may not be compelling enough to grab people’s attention or your video may be simply too long.

• Check out your Cost Per Lead. If it’s lower than your average cost per leads for non-video campaigns, keep running this video ad! If you’re getting more expensive costs per lead, don’t worry. Those videos views may work in your favor if you retarget those people with a specific ads for something they can’t say no to. After all, if they’re watched your video, even if it’s just a part of it, they’ve already started the process of getting to know you.

Knowing how to read this data found in Facebook Ads Manager is the key to actually getting leads that generate revenue. Remember, even though your video ad may be getting millions of views you may be looking at the wrong data.

Understand that selling cold on Facebook is VERY difficult. Make sure you’re a/b testing and are following up with those leads with a phone call, email, or an additional campaign to drive them further down your sales funnel.

As always, if you need help setting up your Facebook Ads or any other Social Media Marketing help please reach out via email at dotzeromedia@gmail.com or call 970-401-3044.

Thanks for reading.

DZM